Courts should be concerned with freedom, not punishment

Courts should not be preoccupied with serving "punishment" to the criminal, but rather concerned with extending (and improving) the rights of the innocent (not necessarily the victim) to freedom from oppression...

It makes sense, often to put a person who has committed a crime into prison... But we must (should) ask what purpose does this serve? Is it to punish the criminal for their actions or is it to provide a greater degree of freedom to those who have been or might become affected by that individual? If we are satisfied (seek) to do no more than punish the criminal this might not lead to a peaceful outcome, clearly corporal punishment does not improve the safety of the environment unless the behaviour of the criminal is altered as a result...

Previously: (click link) "A debt to Society is not a debt to the State, and even a debt to Society does not alleviate or resolve any of the problems presented by crime. It is not enough that a person has been punished, we need to take preventative measures... Making people pay fiat doesn't do any good, or serve a useful purpose."

So then we must ask what "punishment", (to mean sentence) actually improves the freedom of (the remainder of) Society? Prison obviously improves freedom if dangerous criminals are kept away from the law-abiding population... Imposing fines and taxes does not do so.


An example of a State-imposed punishment might be Income Tax, so then; by what mechanism does the payment of income tax improve the freedom of the remainder of the population? It doesn't...

Tuesday 14 April 2009

Update: Taxes and fines are "wrong" unless a crime has been committed, and even if there has been a crime, it is still not an appropriate sentence... to deny self-ownership (by making them pay a fine) does not respect the criminal, it makes them subordinate to you. Why should the State be paid cash simply for being the victim of a crime? Why should we be forced to pay money to the State (by way of taxation), even if we have done a criminal act? A crime should result in the deprivation of liberties, nothing more... not as a punishment, but instead as a means of preventing further harm (but it is still (usually) preferable to keep the criminal alive). We do not (should not) want to make the criminal suffer... only to keep them away from the wider population. It is understandable for people to want to remove a criminal from their midst, but we cannot allow them to torture the criminal.

Making the criminal pay a fine does not achieve any of the outcomes which are desirable (unless the payment is being made to you directly (compensation?), or you want nothing more than to see people suffer).

Income tax: Is it a crime to earn money? (14th April'09)